Design Vision
The beginning of 2006 a group of 4 pretty awesome designers got together and published a virtual conversation on their mutual blogs. Luke Wroblewski, Jim Leftwitch, Dirk Knemeyer, and Bob Baxley (in reverse alphabetical order, b/c Luke is almost always mentioned last otherwise) represent very different backgrounds sometimes within the same individual. They also have different focuses in their design careers. You can get a PDF of the conversation at Functioning Form.
The conversation should be required reading for anyone wanting to move their design career up a notch, make their design teams more influential, and most importantly improve the final quality of their designs, themselves.
The overall salient point of the conversation is that design succeeds best when there is a coherent vision attached to a project. Some of the group focused on this meaning that the vision is owned and directed by a single individual, while others balanced that with a more collaborative approach.
Another salient point of the conversation is that communication is a central component of many facets of a design process. Bob Baxley in particular did a great job of focusing the conversation from communicating solutions to really communicating a design vision. These are two very distinct tasks and both vital to a final solution.
Every conversation has a few holes, and I’m the one to point out the ones that I care about.
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